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"No man is an island" said John Donne in 1624, and while he may be guilty of sexism, he appears ahead of his time in other ways as he expresses a basic ecological and spiritual principle, going on to say, "...every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in all of mankind."

The great naturalist John Muir expressed a similar sentiment in this 1906 writing, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." Indeed there is a seamless web to which we are all inextricably intertwined; a cosmic, universal web in which the pure essence of life flows through all creation. The electronic connections of the World Wide Web are just beginning to externalize in material form what has always existed in energetic form.

And yet, if we are all connected in this manner, this means that whether we like it or not, we are inevitably in relationship with all things and all peoples. What is the nature of this relationship? As discussed in Buddhist psychology, all relationships in the mind and in the world ultimately take on one of three forms: we're either neutral; we like; or we dislike the other that we’re in relationship with.

It seems self-evident that we would want to collect as many in the "like" column as possible: we naturally move towards those people, experiences and places which resonate harmoniously within us. But this betrays an important truth: some of our best teachers and most profound lessons come from those experiences and people we dislike, from those who "push our buttons", from those we cannot stand to be around. And why is that? It’s because these experiences and people force us to see life from a different perspective, to get out of our self-created, self-limiting cocoons and filters of reality and consider alternative possibilities. They force us to grow, to learn, and to expand our beliefs about ourselves and the nature of life. Conflict energizes any system and when approached with a positive, constructive attitude, leads to creative solutions and ideas. For conflict prods and encourages us to stretch further, dig deeper and learn to be better people. It’s easy to be compassionate and loving with those that treat us well, but the real growth comes when we can treat everyone we interact with in a loving manner, and in so doing honor that universal essence which flows through us all.